., spain, and italy. today the four rates are very different. ours has fallen markedly. rates have come in a great deal. i was -- that was the first pillar. the second is that policy would provide the vehicle for accommodating the stimulus to the economy. fiscal policy would be a head wind in terms of the movement of total demand. monetary policy would be accommodative and more importantly, would accommodate the sharp fall in the sterling exchange rate which had taken place between the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2009. that was a 25% fall in the average effective exchange rates of sterling against other currencies. the biggest since the second world war. and the monetary policy was to make sure that that gain in competitiveness was retained by ensuring that domestically generated inflation would remain stable. these pillars were thought to be consistent with the gradual recovery of the economy. what happened was we did not get a gradual recovery. we saw output being broadly flat over the past 2.5 years. it has been a zigzag pattern. we have had the excitement of the